A Trip to Philly

 We left early, as usual, Tucker, CJ and I loaded our stuff and ourselves into the truck and headed east.  No we did not leave Steve at home. He spent the previous day working in Pittsburgh so our first stop was to pick him up at his hotel. After lots of loving from Tucker we were once again on the road. I was amazed at how well the truck did on the highway, and how comfortable it was the entire trip.

We visited with Mark & MaryKate and the dogs.
CJ didn't go back to PopPop's house with us.
He opted for a fun filled night with M & MK.

Mark really liked CJ's NCIS hat.

While Steve helped with renovations to MK's kitchen CJ & I went to visit Bunny.

Presents were piled around the tree.

Bunny started with her donut from 7-11.

Bunny and I posing with her new ice/snow scraper. It should be long enough to clean off the entire width of the car.

Testing out the new binoculars.

CJ was thrilled with his gift from Bunny. It was the final book of the Inheritance series by Christopher Paolini. It was about 3.5 years between books.

 He spent quite a bit of the rest of the visit and the trip home reading it.
The book was worth every bit of the wait.

After our visit and present opening, we picked up Swati and headed over to the Morris Arboretum. It was a beautiful day and lots of other people were there too. Even saw someone in a OSU sweatshirt.

They have this giant structure, tree house, that includes a human size robin's nest, complete with eggs that need someone to sit on them, to incubate them of course.

.
CJ & Aunt Swati

I was the biggest kid playing on the ropes.

Ahhh...sunshine.

CJ and Bunny listening to the sounds of the creatures living in the woods.

The main attraction was the Christmas Railway!

We then met up with Dan who had been working on erecting new fencing in the Wissahickon.

We ate at a little deli/restaurant in the park. The sandwiches were yummy and they had small bags of sweet potato chips the were mmm,mmm, good. Wish we had them in C-bus.

For those of you who are skeptical about bamboo being a sustainable wood source. The tall green trees are bamboo. There are pockets of bamboo just like this all through out this area of Philly. Plant one stalk, get a wall of bamboo in no time at all.

On Saturday, Dan lead CJ and I through the park on one of the newly created trails (while Swati went for a run). This area had been a meadow and then was overrun by non native plants and trees. The Friends of the Wissahickon have worked hard to turn it back into a meadow.

The rock bench CJ & Dan are sitting on was placed there by Dan (and some helpers) as a place for weary hikers to rest. These two weren't weary, just getting out of the way of a couple of mountain bikers.

The stroll through the meadow was enjoyable. We made many stops to look at the rocks; quartz, mica, schist with garnets, and even an interesting mushroom.

 From here we could look down and see the creek, Forbidden Drive and the covered bridge.

 After a quick stop at PopPop's we were off to MK & M's house to see how the renovations were coming. Here you see CJ on guard duty. His job was to keep the dogs out of the mess of the kitchen.

He's doing an impressive job, don't you think!!!